


In Remnants of Spring

by xiujaemin



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Circus, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Female Byun Baekhyun, Female Do Kyungsoo | D.O, Female Lu Han, Female Oh Sehun, Fluff, Hopeful Ending, Multiple Lifetimes, Mutual Pining, Superpowers, prisoner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 22:16:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10626237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiujaemin/pseuds/xiujaemin
Summary: Luhan isn’t one to play Russian roulette with fate, but she takes her chances anyway. Maybe it’s because of the fact that she keeps finding herself falling in love for the same person more than once.





	1. Princess and Prince Charming

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for [nabisonyeo](http://girlexochange.livejournal.com/profile). there had been so many people who inspired/motivated me to write this fic, and i would like to thank them all once again for enabling me to write this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Is the white horse coming?_

**_“Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.”_**  
– Alain De Botton

  


Lu Han finds herself caught up in the middle of a celebration she hasn’t been planning to attend, a red paper fan held up by her right hand covering the lower half of her face. She greets those who they pass by with a gentle tone and a soft smile, careful of the impression she’s going to leave even if she doesn’t remember what the gathering was for. Her family had always been part of the higher ranks of the social strata in their country, after all. It would do no good for her to behave badly.

Along with all the other members of the family, everyone is keeping an eye on her, waiting for just a single mistake to bring her down and drag her family along with her. But as the only child born to her parents, she decides to have none of it, trying to be careful of every movement. Everything must be well-calculated and harmonized, or else the balance would break. _Everything._

A young man a few centimeters shorter than her bows down in front of her in greeting and she returns the gesture, graceful, as if it were an introduction to a dance and not simply a curtsey out of respect. Unlike the other people who she’s met this night, however, this man’s smile was warm, making her smile back wider than the usual, but she hides it behind her fan.

She composes herself and plants a small, courteous smile on her face—not stiff but just enough to be polite—before she brings her hand down and lets the fan concealing her real smile fall away, showing off her elegant features.

She doesn’t know what kind of force it was pulling at her and telling her to look at him—really look at him and not past him as she usually does with most people—but when she does look at him straight in the eyes, she almost stumbles back as she feels a sharp jolt of electricity pass through her nerves when their eyes meet, but she stifles a shriek and hides it behind a tight smile.

 _Control._ All her life, her mother has taught her control; has imposed upon her the self-restraints a lady from the clan of Lu has to have. Controlling the emotions she shows to other people, controlling her every movement. Controlling _her._

But this time, she had almost lost her control. _Almost._ And this has been the first time that this has ever happened.

The feeling is a little foreign to her, since it should never have been that way, considering that this was not the first that someone had looked at her in the eye, and that it had been perfectly normal to have that as the way a young man of his age would acknowledge a young woman of her age.

But there was something in the way that he looked at her that wasn’t the same as the way other people would usually look at her – with either respect, awe, or envy. There was just something about the way his eyes held hers and focused on her as if she was the single, underlying point out of all the jumbled shapes in a given space that extended onwards that she isn’t sure what to feel completely, overwhelmed by his acknowledgement.

Minseok hasn’t even gotten the chance to open his mouth to introduce himself when a petite brunette stops by in front of his companion and bows, before reaching out to whisper in her ear. She purses her lips into a thin line, almost a grimace, but it disappears as quickly as it had appeared that he partly thinks he’s just imagined it.

The lady nods and gestures for the brunette to leave, giving him an apologetic look in return as the other woman bows down again before walking away. “I am terribly sorry, but it seems that I have to attend to some matters. I will be back as quickly as I can.”

Minseok nods and bows lightly, not letting his disappointment show. “Take your time, my lady.” She returns the bow with a tilt of her head that’s lower than his, and before he realizes it, she already has her back to him, the end of the skirt under her long, flowing red robe brushing along the floor, bright, silk-coated Lotus shoes making a soft clip-clopping sound against the hardwood floor as she makes her way to an elegantly-dressed couple who he believes were her parents. He clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

_Just as he thought._

He shakes his head. Clearly, she doesn’t know what effect she has on people. Or if she did, she didn’t plan on using it to her advantage. Not in this type of game, at least.

He stares at the back of her head; at the jade hairpin securing her hair tied in a bun behind her head, at the soft curls that fell along the nape of her neck as the chignon almost starts to unravel from her movements. _Almost._

To her, it might have been just another one of those inevitable meetings in a social gathering of a man and a woman whose family belonged in the upper class of society, but to Minseok, seeing her face feels like seeing the sun—bright and warm—a blinding light that doesn’t hurt his eyes but leaves him breathless, his heart frantically beating against his rib cage.

And really, even if he closed his eyes, she was all that he could ever see; a brilliant gleam of gold that glows a luminous yellow even behind his closed eyelids.

A beacon of hope— a light across the end of the tunnel. Vivid rays of an imperceptible radiance that, as he knows, would glow even brighter in the darkness.

And how could ever lay eyes upon another, when he himself knows that any moon would never be able to compare to the sun?

♚

She doesn’t get to meet him again that night as she promised.

She walks with slow, short steps to the moonlight pavilion in the eastern palace—the place where all the crown princesses were supposed to live in before her marriage with the crown prince is consummated— a palace guard on either side of her and her parents right behind her, palace guards bringing up the rear.

She finds herself looking at her reflection in the pond when they halt their march in front of the pavilion, and she couldn’t help but hate what she’s seeing—the red paint glossing over her lips, the white powder covering every inch of her face, the way her hair is tied up in a bun, the oppressing tightness of the binding around her feet and the hardness of her wooden clogs. She feels as if she’s just a puppet painted over to look like a doll—visually appealing, but left hollow inside.

The emperor arrives and meets them from the other side, his first-born son to his right and an entourage of palace guards and servants carrying paper lanterns behind him. The dragon embroidery on his yellow robes catches her attention, and she is momentarily caught up in a daze at the majesty of garb that she almost forgets to bow down.

She looks up at Wufan, her lips partly cracking into a smile as he smiles down at her. It has been months since they last saw each other; being the crown prince was busy work, after all. Sometimes, she’s still so caught up in the memories of the past that she could so easily forget that the man in front of her is the crown prince and the emperor, not the kid she used to laugh at because he couldn’t draw a circle well and his father who’s always amused with the remarks a seven-year old could offer. It’s been ten years since that, after all—a lot of things had changed.

“I believe you are all aware as to why you’ve been called?” The emperor says after all formalities have ended.

Lu Han’s father shifts in his position, smile proud. He tones it down however, conscious of any misunderstandings that might happen and he bows down again as the emperor acknowledges his presence. She could see his purple silk robes gleam under the moonlight from the corner of her eye, and she couldn’t help but remember how proud he was the first time he was able to wear those clothes when he’s been admitted as an imperial official in the palace. She keeps her head bowed down.

The hat he’s wearing seems to weigh his head down, however, and it takes him time to raise his head again. Maybe it was because of the additional knobs that had been placed there as his rank got higher; maybe because it was his old age acting out on him. Lu Han isn’t sure. But what she is sure of, however, is that she despises the hungry look she saw on her father when he had been presented with the ministry’s clothes and the new knobs for his hat.

“Of course, your highness. And we are always honored to be graced by your presence.” She almost protests, because she doesn’t have any clue with what she’s doing here, but she keeps her mouth shut. She must never let her emotions take over her, for that’s what will ruin the balance, and she doesn’t want her family getting involved in any issues, and she most especially doesn’t want to get on the emperor’s bad side.

“Very well.” The emperor nods. “The marriage will be announced to the public next week, and will proceed in a month. I apologize for having to drag you out of the festivities, but I wanted to tell you all personally. I just couldn’t have a mere servant telling you the good news, after all!”

Lu Han could probably hear the dangerous glint in her father’s eyes if it could just make a sound. She isn’t completely sure she’s following the gist of what they’re talking about, but she knows it’s something that definitely favors her father. Why else would he bow even lower, to the extent that his forehead is reaching his knees? Even if the emperor was the closest thing they could have to a god, her father was a man of pride. “We humbly thank you for your generosity, your majesty.”

The emperor laughs, loud and boisterous, deep voice echoing in the darkness. “Of course, of course. Anything for my in-laws.” He leaves with a swish of his robe, his entourage following him attentively. Wufan gives them one last bow, and it was then that Lu Han noticed that the smile he gave her was mostly sad than in recognition or amusement. She isn’t sure why.

“What’s happening?” she asks them both.

“No need to worry, we’re doing this for your future.” Her father says with a tone of finality, as if that sentence alone could answer all the questions floating in her mind.

“Really, what’s happening? I just want to know what’s happening.” Lu Han could feel the sulkiness in her tone, and she knows that this is inappropriate—that she’s practically acting like a brat—but she doesn’t care.

She could see a vein throbbing on her father’s forehead that looks like it’s about to pop from frustration. “You must learn when to close your mouth and when to ask questions.” He nods to her mother. “You go tell her.” He says, before leaving to go back to the revelry. He couldn’t miss any events given his position, after all.

Lu Han feels offended for her mother, because she believes that women aren’t set to submit to every whim of her husband, yet the teachings they’re brought up with say otherwise. Maybe the old woman who used to teach her ethics and propriety was right—that no matter how perfect she looked and behaved, there will always be something wrong with her.

Her mother—the perfect image of an ideal woman that she so much admires but secretly despises for her meekness—bows down to her father before turning to face her, lips only parting lightly as the words come out of her mouth, light as breath. “You and the crown prince are to be married.”

She doubted as much, but still, she never expected it to be true. There was nothing wrong with marrying Wufan; it was beneficial for not only her, but also her family, yet the idea of being forced to be tied down to a man you see as a brother is repulsive in her eyes. “Does he know?” her voice comes out as a faint reverberation in the air that it’s almost like a whisper.

“Yes.” Came the answer, coming out of a delicate pair of lips.

 _But what about Junhee?_ She almost asks. Wufan’s relationship with the daughter of the scholar who was running the imperial academy hasn’t been kept as much of a secret from the people within the palace, but no news about it was allowed to go out of the palace walls. “And what did he say?”

“Even if he doesn’t favor it, he doesn’t have much of a choice. The empress dowager approved of this marriage herself.” She knows that this marriage would never be the one she’s aspired to have because she already knows that he has someone else in his heart. She’s starting to think that would be okay anyway—they were friends, after all, so they could probably live with each other for a couple of years, and soon after Junhee could be his concubine, but she knows that things aren’t that simple. Concubines were, after all, deprived of the rights they’ve enjoyed previously and are even looked down upon by other people, unless they’ve come to rise to power. She doesn’t want Junhee to go through any of those.

And what if right after that moment, just after her father has written her fate down in stone, she’s found the one who will fill the gap left in her heart, too?

Suddenly her robes feels constricting, restraining her breathing. The cloth she’s wearing underneath, wrapped around her torso makes her feel even more trapped, held back by a force that makes her lungs contract and her breathing uneven.

The harmony is broken. Chaos ensues. Her heart yields.

♚

There’s a soft knock on her door late into the night, and she cautiously slides the door open, peeking to see who it might be before fully opening the door.

Baekhee is holding a candle by her left hand and a small, delicate-looking flower that has purple petals on her right, definitively looking out of place as its pastel color strikes in contrast with the brown monochrome of the walnut-colored floor and Baekhee’s brown tunic.

Baekhee hands her the flower, and she inspects it, looking for anything it has out of the norm. “Who is it from?” she asks, mostly out of curiosity than any other.

Baekhee simply shakes her head repeatedly in response, putting a finger to her lips to tell her to keep this a secret conspiracy between the two of them.

An iris flower left without a note, the identity of its sender eating away at her curiosity.

♚

Ever since then, it would recur every night, with Baekhee giving a few short, light knocks against the frame of her door.

It isn’t until the seventh night that the iris is simply left there, lying on the floor, waiting for her, that she finds out who it was.

It was not so much as her sleuthing skills was that great that she herself found out who this “admirer” could be, but give or take, it was probably because he grew impatient with his own game and decided to show himself to her.

A simple “hello” is all he says when she slips past the door to the balcony at the back of the house, overlooking the garden to get some fresh air that night, his silhouette looking dramatically surreptitious with the night sky as his backdrop. A flower boy amongst a sea of flowers. She is taken aback by the sudden presence of a man she’s so sure she’s met somewhere, used to the constant absence of companions that are neither servants nor palace guards, but she doesn’t scream.

There is that jolt of electricity again when their eyes meet, but this time, she manages to suppress the shudders that pass through her nerves that he barely even notices it. There’s a strange familiarity with the way that he smiles that makes her think that they’ve met before, not before this day, but a time even before that. _Is this what they call fate?_

“I was starting to wonder when you’ll ever go out of that house. You always seem to be in there, if you’re not in the palace.” Minseok says, and Lu Han could still detect the recesses of shyness in his tone, despite being used to the attention now, somehow.

“So, I heard your name is Lu Han,” he smiles as he says this instead of a proper introduction, and she couldn’t help but feel fond of how his profligate ways highlight his childish features. It somehow adds to his charm. “No offence meant, but your name sounds like a guy’s.”

It’s the first time someone actually pointed that out, and she gropes around blindly for an answer, trying to remember the petty excuse of an explanation her mother could give. She shouldn’t exactly be talking to the guy, mostly because everything that she’s learned thus so far tells her that this is wrong; that being with a man—let alone a stranger—in the middle of the night is wrong, but she ignores this. It doesn’t show, but she likes to bend the rules a little sometimes, usually because there’s that thrill in waiting to see if someone would find out, even if she knows what she did isn’t much of a crime. But this, she does mostly because she’s tired of thinking of what somebody else might say.

This, she does because she wants to be with him a little longer.

“My father thought it was nice to name me after the Han Dynasty, since a certain Empress Lu rose to power during that time.” She finds herself explaining, and even though he was still partly a stranger, she notices that it’s easier to talk to him than it is with her parents. Even if he just maybe kind of snuck into their house in the middle of the night and she still doesn’t know his name. “I think he’s forgotten the fact that all of the things she did, she did for power and self-gain.”

He looks down, and it takes him a few moments before he looks back at her, as if he was considering what she’s been saying. She hasn’t given much thought to it, but that seemed to be the first time someone actually _listened_ to what she’s got to say. “Not because he wanted a boy?”

She shrugs. “There’s this and there’s that. In the end, the answer will be that he’s never wanted me.” She could feel his eyes on her as she makes a few steps forward and stops in front of the railing of the balcony to put her arms over it and lean against it.

“But why would he never want you?” he looks remorseful, as if he regretted not being able to do anything to fix her fate.

“Because I’m a girl and girls will always be dead weight to their family.” She says this simply and with a tone of finality, as if that could explain her entire existence.

She doesn’t tell him of the empress’s fate, that in the end, luck didn’t favor her and that after she died, she wasn’t honored and her whole clan had been banished from the city. Maybe because she doesn’t want him to think that she’ll suffer the same fate as well.

Or maybe because she wants to convince herself of that.

♚

They often see each other night after night that she easily gets tired in the mornings, especially with her days spent in the palace to train in becoming the next crown princess (she still doesn’t know what to do with that problem, but likes to believe that by secretly accepting the guy’s courting, she’s avoided the issue entirely). She knows they haven’t known each other as much as she’s known the other people living in the palace (Wufan and Junhee, for instance, who she grew up with, but then grew apart from), and this proves to hold some sort of truth as to how their relationship is, because she doesn’t find out his name until after the third night they’ve been in terms of getting to know each other, when she remembers to ask him.

“It’s Minseok,” he laughs, bubblegum pink gums showing as his grin widens. “Kim Minseok. Shouldn’t you have asked my name first before talking to me?”

“Kim?” Lu Han’s eyes widen upon recognition. No wonder he was at that party even when only the families of the military and civil officials were allowed—his father had been one of the few favored by the king. She had merely dismissed this then and thought that he was one of the sons of the officials that she hasn’t met yet. “You mean you’re the son of that—“

“Korean man that dragged himself and even got his own family trapped in the middle of the war between your country and the _T’u Chuehs_? Yes.” He finishes her sentence deliberately, gauging her reaction. “He’s also known as _that man who’s stupid enough to not accept the king’s offer of giving him a position as one of the country’s royal advisers_ because he keeps on insisting that he’s okay with teaching literature in the imperial academy.”

“My father hates your father,” she simply shrugs, as if what she just said could be considered as part of casual conversation. “Though I couldn’t fully understand why, I could remember it was because he asked your father to aid him in boosting his rank five years ago. But your father wouldn’t budge, even if he was promised a position as governor.”

Minseok nods. “I knew that much. Your father still got the position he’s always wanted, though. Even though it took him five years to do that.”

“ _His father was only favored by the king because he gave some piece of advice that helped with the problem with the T’u Chuehs. Pathetic.”_ Her father’s own harsh words from years ago ring in her ears. _Green robes will never surpass purple ones._ “But your father probably had a good reason as to why he didn’t help my father, right?”

Minseok nods again, not showing his surprise at how Lu Han could so much as easily ignore the fact that she’s technically banned from seeing him just because her father hates his father’s guts. “My father hadn’t exactly told me why, though.” This isn’t completely a lie, but he likes to think that he understands what his father meant back then when he’s offhandedly commented about Lu Han’s father – that “ _underneath all that majesty and grace covered up by his Confucian beliefs, he has a dark heart in him.”_

Seeing Lu Han now, never fully happy despite the power her family is enjoying, he thinks he’s getting his father’s point.

♚

Lu Han’s throat feels dry the moment she sees Junhee outside the palace gates on her way home. She immediately tells the men carrying the sedan chair to stop, not even waiting for her servants to aid her in coming down and rushing over to call her friend’s attention.

Junhee’s hair is braided and left hanging over her shoulder unlike Lu Han’s, which is tied securely to the back of her head with a jade pin her mother has handed down to her. Junhee’s clothes were also, by far, simpler – shorter, pink robes over a long, brown skirt—compared to Lu Han’s purple silk garb. For lack of words, even though Junhee was beautiful, pale skin as white as snow adding to the splendor of her warm-hearted smile and cheerful eyes, to a common onlooker’s eyes, it was nothing compared to the elegance of Lu Han’s profile.

Yet despite the differences in their physical appearance and the years they spent apart, Junhee goes over to Lu Han and hugs her as if there never has been a rift between their relationship.

“But Junhee… Don’t you hate me?” Lu Han starts, eyes beginning to brim with tears as she tightens her hug. “Wufan… you know about him, don’t you?”

Junhee pats her in the back, a comforting gesture that she’s always done whenever her instincts tell her that Lu Han is about to cry. Even if she’s older, Lu Han knows that it’s Junhee who acts more like the grown-up, becoming the mediator whenever she and Wufan fought over whose turn it was during one of their games or whose argument was right. “Of course I know. And why would I hate you? It’s not like it’s your fault that the king wanted you as his daughter-in-law. You’re my friend, and you did nothing wrong to me. It would feel wrong if I hated you.”

Lu Han breaks away from the hug, holding Junhee by the shoulders at arm’s-length to look her in the eyes. “B-but… what about you?”

Junhee shakes her head, a smile still on her face. “And what about me? I’ll get to finish reading all the books in the library! There’s always something new every week, I’m telling you. Who knows when I’ll get to finish those all?” Lu Han almost starts apologizing again when she sees the uncertainty in Junhee’s eyes and the sadness she bears as her lips slightly quiver because maybe that’ll make everything else a bit better, but she knows that Junhee wouldn’t like it.

In a way, Lu Han envies Junhee because aside from the fact that her father was brave enough to not conform to their society’s common standard of beauty and not have her feet bound (he believed it was fruitless, and he would always tell them how it only brought pain. “ _How would anyone see beauty after all of that pain?_ ” had always been his reason. _“Besides, how could Junhee ever help me in archiving all these documents in the library?_ ), she is also able to freely read all the books she wants to read and learn all the things that she wants to know about—things that Lu Han could never have because her father was a stickler to beliefs and her mother was too much of an ideal wife that she so easily submits to what her husband tells her.

But now that things have happened, Lu Han feels nothing but admiration for her, for she doubts she could ever be as strong as Junhee, whose paramour is about to get married to the person in front of her and still manage a smile.

All she ever wanted back then was to learn something—anything, but she couldn’t. _For a woman without talent is virtuous while a woman too well educated is apt to create trouble_.

And even if she could, she’s starting to doubt if she’s ready to leave everything for the sake of pursuing her _real_ dreams. Especially now that she’s found someone she looks forward to seeing every evening.

“And you know what, Lu Han?” Junhee adds, smile never faltering. “It might seem too far-fetched, but I like to think that whatever happens, we will still get to have another shot to be together in the future.”

♚

For them, on that day, it just happens.

It starts out with Minseok asking her with a harmless question of, “Do you know why I give you irises instead of roses?”

She shakes her head in response. _No._

Minseok shakes his head, maybe disappointed because she never even cared to guess, but amused that she’s not giving arguments today. “Because irises remind me so much of the moon and you will always be my sun. But even the moon’s beauty would never compare to the sun’s radiance, right?”

Maybe it’s because the look in Minseok’s eyes is so earnest that she herself understands; maybe because he had leaned forward, deliberately slow as if to give her the chance to decide whether she wants to do this or not; maybe because she didn’t distance herself quite much, but all she remembers is that instead of thinking of a witty comeback, they’re kissing; just a soft trail of butterfly touches against each other’s lips. Yet every touch leaves a trail of pleasure, and it stirs up inside her, bringing up unwarranted desires.

Lu Han pulls away quickly, cheeks tinted with a darker shade of red and touches her lips with the tips of her fingers, not because she didn’t want it—in fact, it was everything she could ever wish for—but because she knows she shouldn’t keep hanging on to him when there’s clearly no future set for the two of them. “But I’m getting married.”

Minseok looks pensive, eyes going glassy as his mind wanders that Lu Han thinks he wouldn’t say anything anymore and just leave. “I know.”

“But why?” _Why did you have to torture yourself by wanting to commit to a woman who’s already tied to a future she can’t take charge over?_

“Because I know you don’t love him.” He answers quietly, voice coming out small. But he doesn’t sound unsure.

“How can you be so sure about that?” Lu Han looks away.

“Because I’ve loved you the first moment I saw you, and I can feel that you feel the same way too.” She almost stutters, but she couldn’t deny him the truth that her heart screams out his name, and nobody else’s.

Lu Han’s blush positively turns shades darker. “Don’t you think… it’s still too early for this?”

Minseok chuckles, and it seems to be all that’s needed to release the tension from the air. Looking at him like this, Lu Han is reminded of the boy who trespassed in their house, and is still trespassing at the moment. “Whatever you deem fit, my lady.”

♚

For them, on the day that is their last, it just happens.

She feels a stinging pain when her father drives a hand across her left cheek, and she’s sure that it would leave a mark there. “You’re a shame to the family and to the whole clan! I told you to never even so much glance at that family, and now I see you fraternizing with the enemy?” he gives her a disbelieving look of betrayal, the layers of disappointment overlying all reason . _I thought better of you._

She doesn’t correct him that the Kims had never really been enemies in the first place, but she holds her tongue and bites back her words, letting them settle at the tip of her tongue. Because going against her father would mean as much as committing high treason. “I’d rather not have a daughter at all than have one alive, yet enough to become a traitor.” Her father’s words sting, and she’s sure that none of them ring true, but she knows that none of the things she says would ever change his mind.

Lu Han’s mother weeps in the distance as if her fate has already been sealed and that there was no alternative way out. Well her mother _is_ right, but she likes to think that she still has a chance.

“But what are you going to do to him?” Lu Han finds herself asking, even if she knows that the last thing her father wants to hear is her voice; even if she knows that to him, seeing her probably kept turning off a switch in his system.

“What I should’ve done with his family back then.” There is nothing hiding the scathing anger in his voice.

♚

Minseok is bound by thick, heavy ropes, cuts and bruises marring his face. Lu Han is angered by the mere thought of anyone doing this to Minseok, and she’s fuming, disgusted because this is her father’s own doing. Now she understands why Minseok’s father has never helped him.

She breaks free from her mother’s grasp and runs to his side, ignoring the spears aimed at her by the very people who have sworn to protect her back then and furiously picking at the ropes, trying to untie them. She succeeds, although almost starting to make a scene from her frustration as tears start pooling in her eyes, chanting that she would save him no matter what. Minseok gives her a tight smile, even though she could practically see him wincing in pain underneath all the layers of chivalry and valor he’s putting on.

She looks around, looking all of them in the eye, willing them to remember this day—this moment—and carrying the burden of guilt for all of their remaining days. “You will have to go through me first before you could touch him.” Her eyes are seething, mad; maddened.

“Did you think I wouldn’t be able to do that?” Her father reappears beside her mother, and she looks from the woman who has raised her to be as pleasing as a trophy prize to the man who has always imposed control over her.

“Father, did you ever think I wasn’t serious all this time?” It’s a challenge—not a question. She feels Minseok tense under her touch, but she’s firm in her decision.

At this point, no one can bail them out of this fate, anyway.

Her father waves a hand, as if dismissing some small matter and not his own daughter’s life. “Do what you must.” _She’s not much of a loss, anyway._ Her mother looks as if she’s going to say something and she reaches out, but stops halfway, letting her arm fall to her side. _A husband’s decision for the household is final and should never be questioned._

There is no trial, nor checking of jurisdiction; just an adjudicator’s biased judgment passed on and executed immediately.

Her chin quivers from having to hold in tears that are threatening to spill, not much because she’s hurt that her father himself dropped this sentence upon them or because her mother is just standing there, letting her husband be even though she knows that this is all wrong, but because their misfortune is too evident at this point to even argue. _Why did we have to get to know each other, just to end like this?_

Minseok holds her hand with trembling fingers, fingernails caked with dirt and blood. The look he gives her goes through enough, more than the words he couldn’t say, and she knows.

They wait for death together, hands clasped together as one; tightly, protectively, as if through it, they would be shielded from harm, or maybe someone would come and spare their unfortunate lives.

But as their lives really are unfortunate, the end comes too quickly before they could say their goodbyes.

 

  



	2. Pray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Who's the real monster now?_

From what she had been taught, there were three rules in the circus:

**One—never look back.**

That was one of Lu’s specialties. Who does even want to return to a life where your own parents would put you in harm’s way just because you were different? She lives and breathes this rule; there isn’t even any problem about that anymore.

Maybe that’s why she’s partly thankful of the fact that her parents had sold her off to that old man wearing a top hat and a purple tweed suit.

But sometimes, she wonders if her parents missed her – truly missed her, not just getting the feeling of something foreign shoved from under their noses, fumbling for normality.

But who would ever even cry for a daughter who no one ever wanted? She doubts any tears have been shed from their household.

**Two—never listen to anyone else.**

The sparkle that had always been in her eyes were now gone, replaced by a dull edge. _The gem had hardened, but it had turned into coal in return._

She doesn’t talk to anybody unless needed, and that’s what they do in return. It’s not like she’s an unlikeable person—in fact, the first time she got sent here, almost everybody wanted to be her friend. Maybe it was that aura of innocence and gentleness; maybe it was because of those sparkling eyes that hid mischief and laughter; maybe it was the immovable confidence in the way she lifted her head when she came in, all pretenses of the grief she’s feeling left back home.

Nobody knows for sure, but they assumed that her acrobatic acts and performances with the trapeze had made her daring, ready to lash out at anyone, even the ring master for any sort of injustice. And that was great and all, all acts of bravery considered, but even the people she’s almost made friends with back then have kept their distances, not knowing what stunt she’ll try to pull off this time. Nobody wants to be involved in an act where they’ll end up getting beaten up after a strenuous show, after all.

Lu’s not that much of a stickler for rules, but something tells her that if she tries to ally herself among the others, they wouldn’t be spared once she makes another mistake, intended or not. So she decides to stay out of their track.

**Three: fall.**

Lu winces in pain as the strip of leather makes contact against her back once more, bright red seeping through the fabric of her shirt as it draws out blood. She’s on her elbows and she’s wheezing, every breath she takes a struggle; she might have broken a rib or two from when she was kicked on the side. She clenches her fists, leather gloves tightening around her hands as she does so. She could do something—just reach out and touch his skin with her bare hands, and it would be the end of it. But she doesn’t.

Her senses aren’t at their peaks right now and there are blurry white floating objects at the end of her line of vision, cloudy, hazy. She feels like she’s starting to hallucinate, conjuring up an image of a man peeking in from a small opening in the tent’s flap, but if she is, then wouldn’t she have been able to conjure up an imagined world where she isn’t in any form of pain?

The ring master grabs a fistful of her hair and jerks her head up, nostrils flaring in anger. “Try that again and I’ll feed you to the lions.” She closes her eyes, trying not to see his murderous, bloodshot eyes; trying not to smell the metallic odor of blood clinging on his suit as if it were perfume.

She almost smiles, remembering the triumphant whinny the whip-marked white stallion did when she freed it from its stable. The horse had been the ring master’s best as it was the crowd’s favorite among all the animals, taking into consideration its beauty and elegance. She partly wonders if they’ve noticed the scars across its skin but said nothing about it or if they just chose to ignore it, choosing to see the splendor right before their very eyes and paying no attention to the scratches beneath the surface. Her muscles feel sore, but it was worth it, anyway.

He suddenly lets go and pushes her face further down on the sandy floor, and she could hear the bones of her nose break as it makes impact with the floor. There isn’t a whimper. She doesn’t even scream.

Maybe because she’s so used to it by now that even if it hurts, she’s way past caring. The only thing she wanted now was a way to escape: a light at the end of her tunnel.

✞

That night, there were screams coming from the wagon where the ring master and his wife slept. Everybody pretended not to hear. Nobody would be able to do anything, anyway. Or at least, that’s what they tell themselves, because none of them wanted to help either way.

But Lu didn’t have to pretend to miss every yelp of pain and gasps surprise, because she was locked away in one of the cages hidden in the back part of the tent where they kept the animals, the soreness of her muscles enough of a force to make her sleep.

Nobody else had to pretend to sleep through the screaming when all the other performers and circus workers were forced to consciousness in the middle of the night pain shooting through their bodies after every practiced slash.

The red stripes on the big top start to look like blood.

✞

She wakes up to find herself inside a room with walls that were bare except for a silver cross that hung across from where she is lying on a cot. The metal creaks under her weight as she tries to sit up.

Everything is white, and on the bed there is nothing but a pillow and a bedspread, but she doesn’t even mind that the mattress was a little bit too hard and that there aren’t any sheets, because this has been the most comfortable situation she’s been able to wake up to in the months (or has it been years? She doesn’t even bother to look at the calendar anymore) that she’s been in the circus.

She’s stripped of her clothes from the previous night’s performance – a striped leotard whose tight fitting she could never get used to—and is currently wearing a white hospital gown. She immediately sits upright, checking her hands. The gloves were still there.

There isn’t even a knock on the door, and if she hasn’t heard the faint click of the door knob as it opens, she wouldn’t have noticed that someone is coming in. She looks up as a boy with rounded cheeks and neatly-trimmed mop of blonde hair with a few shades of black showing at the roots enters the room wearing a neatly-pressed black suit and well-polished leather shoes, and she couldn’t help but squint, somehow remembering a face that she doesn’t remember seeing, but somehow feels like she’s seen before. He is carrying a tray with porcelain kitchenware, but she isn’t sure if it was for her.

The boy smiles down at her, but it wasn’t warm or inviting like she expects. She’s sure it was supposed to be friendly, but it only comes up cold and empty. “Hello, Lu. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

✞

He doesn’t tell her much, except that he works for _this place –_ a private medical facility headed by someone named Do Kyungseon—and that the “poor sanitation and constant physical abuse” at the circus has come to their attention, leading them to act out.

“…But we could only save you. I apologize for not being able to get your friends out of that place.” The boy—Xiumin, as he introduced himself—says, head slightly bent low which Lu thinks of as an expression of regret, but she doesn’t sense the remorse in his tone.

She nods, not even trying to correct him that she didn’t technically have anyone to call as a friend back there, because then she would’ve sounded even more pitiful. She still feels partly sad, though, because even though she wasn’t particularly close with anyone, she would have wanted for them to live in a better place; get a better job; do what they really want in life, without having to watch out for a whip to hit them on the back when they make a mistake.

“When could I meet Kyungseon, though? I want to thank her personally.” Lu asks.

“Soon,” he replies, not losing the formality of his tone, even though she feels that they could certainly have addressed each other informally. “But for now, you’d have to recover.”

She only notices the bandages on her arms when he turns on his heels to leave the room, leaving the tray of food behind.

✞

She hears a voice calling out her name, gentle but firm in its resolution. She cracks her eyes halfway open and is greeted by a blurry sight of black pants and black leather shoes, and she lifts her head up a bit to see tufts of blonde hair on top of a slightly rounded face. She groans a bit as she tries to place the memory correctly, recalling a face peeking out from in-between the cold metal bars of her cage, repeating a name that she somehow knows, but doesn’t remember; like a chant stuck in her memory that she couldn’t seem to say out loud in her uncertainty, but could definitely still recall.

The cage seemed to look like the one where she was imprisoned in previously, but she doesn’t remember being conscious during the time that she was saved, so she assumes that it was just a dream, something to make up for the fact that she had no idea how he had rescued her from that place.

As she slowly gets up and acknowledges her savior, she remembers a dream which felt so real that it could have been a memory, sharp angles and bright colors of an assortment of fresh flowers hanging in a garden dotting her line of vision, along with the smell of parchment and ink and old books; a dream wherein he called her out, but in a different accent and a different tone—adoringly, if she might say. As if she were the only object of his affection, all of his attention directed towards her and nobody else.

But this time, when he repeats her name, an instruction of dressing up a bit so that she could finally see Kyungseon, his voice is dead and flat that it reminds her so much of his soulless eyes. Which was weird, really, because she remembers looking into them for the first time and seeing that there was that spark of recognition in there, as if they’ve met even before this.

✞

At the end of the tunnel, there is light: a light so bright it burns your eyes, yet it dampens out the feeling of loss and hopelessness that you’d pick it over anything else at any time of the day.

On natural instinct, Lu walks toward that shining beacon of newfound hope, determined to get out and get a glimpse of what it’s like to live _—really live_ — not even thinking of what might be out there.

But really, what does lie beyond the end of the tunnel she’s in? Is it freedom?

Or is just another trap?

✞

A petite girl that has short, black hair that’s barely past her shoulders is sitting on a revolving chair, black dress fitting her frame perfectly, the outline of her curves emphasized by the color. Lu thinks that she’s too young to be the head of a private medical facility and have the burden of responsibilities weighing her shoulders down, but then again she herself was too young to have been experiencing the hardships of life, so it was fair game.

By the looks of it, Kyungseon couldn’t have been any older than fourteen or sixteen, but the way she carries herself, the way she is sure of her every movement, says otherwise. Lu thinks of how her confidence adds more to her beauty and ponders on whether it would be the same for her. Suddenly, she feels conscious in the laced, white dress she randomly picked up from the pile of clothes Xiumin has handed her. “Hello. I am Do Kyungseon, and you will be under our care from now on.” Lu knows the smile Kyungseon gives her is aimed for a friendly aura, but all she feels is coldness, and a foreboding sense of being trapped in a cage far smaller than the one the ringmaster usually traps her in washes over her.

✞

Lu does particularly nothing in the facility, only being allowed to go out of her room whenever it’s mealtime or when Kyungseon does a checkup on her. She knows it’s not right—that even out of the circus, she’s still like an animal tied up on a leash and trapped in a cage, despite the fact that she _is_ under much better care— but she feels as if she’s just a pig being fattened up and taken care of for slaughter; that once they find her of no particular use, they’ll just throw her back into the circus or some other place.

Maybe it’s the shadows of her parents speaking, turning their backs on her in fear even when they had been the ones to raise her. Maybe it’s the ring master talking through, looking at her in disgust and contempt even when she used to be one of his circus’s famous acts. Maybe it’s the ghosts of her past, running after her, screaming that she’s a monster.

But she doesn’t listen to the whispers, because she knows that they’re even greater monsters than she will ever be.

✞

Even though Xiumin joins them during meals, he doesn’t say anything. In fact, he doesn’t say anything whenever Kyungseon’s around, unless it’s something of dire need to be said out loud. So Lu asks away, using up the words that Xiumin’s never spoken up.

“Is anybody else around here right now? It seems to me that you two are the only people here.”

“It’s a private facility. We aren’t exactly required to work all the time, so the people get to have breaks once in a while. It’s now December, so we have a month’s worth of holiday break.” Lu doesn’t exactly keep track of the date, only knowing the months based on the weather, so it’s kind of unsettling to find that out while locked up inside, not feeling the coldness of the snow against her skin.

“But why are you not on a break?”

“It’s not like that. Technically I _am_ on a break, since the facility’s closed up. But I just couldn’t leave my work when there’s so much to do, especially after Xiumin found you.” Lu is speechless for a moment and she blushes, because this is the first time anyone has gotten out of their way to do something for her. She steals a glance at Xiumin, but he seems unperturbed, continuing to chew on his food with a pokerfaced expression. Kyungseon notices this and looks a bit amused, but she doesn’t say anything and chooses to drink from her cup instead, white porcelain blending well with her skin tone as she picks it up with dainty fingers.

After a moment’s hesitation, Lu fires up more questions (mostly about the facility—like whether Kyungseon started it alone or whether she got backed up by her parents, etcetera etcetera. The question about how Xiumin is there, she thinks she’d have to save up for next time), and it still amazes her how straightforward Kyungseon answers without any hesitation building up. Kyungseon seems to be the type to easily get ticked off whenever people ask her because whenever Lu has another question coming up, a muscle in her jaw jumps, but she doesn’t say or do anything to put off Lu’s queries.

“Why are you both always dressed in black, though?” Lu asks, gulping down the contents of her cup in one go. The tea still tastes bitter in her mouth, but it helps her sleep at night, so she obliges. She doesn’t dream anymore, and she kind of misses those recurring dreams of a man with a face she couldn’t really focus on, fingers filling in the spaces between her own, whispering words of ardor under the light cast by the moon upon them. But she’d rather not dream at all than risk the nightmares that follow after— of the constricting pain in her chest while death lulls her into its arms; of _knowing_ that everything’s not going to be alright even when she feels that same hand squeeze hers, an assurance that this is not really the end, because they will get to see each other again; of nothing but burning agony in spite of all the _we’ll get through this’s._

“So that we would always be prepared to go to a funeral service in case someone dies.” Lu could tell from the quirk of Kyungseon’s lips that she was joking, but somehow, Lu felt that she wasn’t.

It feels unsettling. 

✞

✞

 

It’s strange, because Xiumin left her door unlocked when he leaves. She thinks he just might have forgotten, but the way he looked at her right before he left just as he’s carrying with him the tray containing her medicine (“Painkillers”, Kyungseon had told her the first time she was given a tablet. “And some others to help with the psychological trauma”) as if he wants to say something but couldn’t, because someone is stopping him – told her that this wasn’t just some mistake—that he’s really given her the liberty to go out, even if it was just for once.

Lu pads out of the room on her bare feet, the coldness of the marble tiles of the whitewashed facility enough to keep her in focus. She walks on a straight line, as if balancing on a tightrope, mostly because old habits die hard.

There’s a door by the corner that’s partially opened, and she takes a peek before going in after confirming that no one was inside.

The room looks straight out of a movie: a biology laboratory of a private university, with a counter crowded with various equipment and cabinets with see-through glass panels, where bottles of preserved bodies of dead animals are stocked up.

Lu comes closer to the nearest part of the cabinet and stands on her tiptoes, taking a peek of what it looks like up close. She staggers back moments later, blood rushing cold and guts feeling mushed up together after realizing that no, it wasn’t just a preserved animal, but a preserved fetus. She almost gags, because even if it was for medical purposes, wasn’t it unethical to keep a fetus in a glass jar? Wasn’t it supposed to be buried instead?

She swallows the bile that had risen up her throat and suppresses the feeling of queasiness that has surfaced, choosing to look around even more. There are more bottles, and upon closer inspection, Lu realizes that none of them contained animals and are actually filled with unborn human children, varying in sizes but still comparatively smaller than the one she first saw. There’s a sick feeling in her gut and a voice in her head that sounds like Xiumin, telling her that she should get out of there quickly, but something else pulls at her and she proceeds to check the next set of bottles, lined up on display.

And they are definitely much, much worse.

There’s a finger, and an eyeball, and what seems to be parts of a brain. All of them have pictures as labels—pictures not of animals, but of humans, young and old, lying down, eyes closed, unfeeling.

And dead.

At the very end, there’s a heart whose crimson color has not yet faded, still intact. Still beating.

The voice inside Lu’s head becomes louder; more insistent, and this time, she complies, rushing out as fast as she can. But the thing is, fate doesn’t seem to know what proper timing is, because she bumps right into Kyungseon the moment she gets out, and she falls back, landing on her butt. There’s a look of confusion over Kyungseon’s face at first as she registers what has happened, but it doesn’t give Lu enough time to get up and get away, because the next thing she knows, Kyungseon’s fingers are around her wrist, holding her in a death grip. The smaller girl is looking at her with a murderous glare, eyes speaking up the flaring anger inside of her. Kyungseon looks more of a monster than she thought her parents were, and an even greater demon than the ring master.

Do Kyungseon was the type of monster who would let you in her home and feed you the most delicious food, only to cut you up and eat you out later. This much is evident in the way she yanks Lu up with a forceful grasp, when only hours ago, she was entertaining Lu’s nonstop idle chatter with an amused smile. “I specifically told you to never get out of your room unless I told you to, didn’t I?”

Of all the things Lu wants to say, only the words “You’re a monster,” comes out of her mouth, choked, as if they had been forced out of her.

Kyungseon arches a perfect eyebrow, as if daring her to say more. It is more of arrogance than anger now. “So you noticed. I doubt though, that you do know just how much of a monster I am.” Lu isn’t sure what exactly Kyungseon is talking about, but then she remembers the other people she left at the circus who “couldn’t be saved”, and Xiumin, who never usually speaks unless needed and only ever follows Kyungseon’s orders. And she knows.

“What exactly have you done to them?” her voice is shaking now, hands forming into fists against her sides, the gloves tightening around her fingers as they stretch.

“Nothing much, really,” Kyungseon shrugs, and she looks so much like a little child that all murderous tendencies seem to be docile and far from menacing. “I just had to sort through my options first, clean out the clutter. And do some tests, to check if anyone’s ever eligible. Either that, or they just add up to the pile of failures.”

“And what, you keep them for your collection?” It wasn’t an accusation, most of like an observation, really.

Kyungseon smirks. “Maybe.”

Maybe it was because of Kyungseon’s unabated egotism. Maybe it was because Lu wanted revenge for everybody else. Maybe because she could see that whatever’s at the end of the tunnel is much, much worse, so she decides to close it up, even if it means she’s left buried under a pile of rubble as the tunnel collapses.

With a single move, Lu takes off the glove on her right hand and reaches out, just enough to touch. It seems like an ironic thing to do, considering how repulsed she feels, but Lu knows more. The effect is quick, Kyungseon’s skin turning into an ugly shade of black, the color spreading faster with every ticking second, covering every inch of Kyungseon’s arm.

Kyungseon is able to pull back, but the damage is done, and her whole arm has decayed, skin blackened and wilted. Lu takes this to her advantage, running to wherever her feet will take her. It’s not like she knows the whole building’s blueprint to be confident in her choice of passageways, but she’d rather get lost in the vast maze left unexplored that is the building than stay in her spot and wait for judgment as Kyungseon mourns her ruined arm.

Lu runs and runs and runs, breathing heavy as her lungs burn. She isn’t sure how, but she ends up in the rooftop, trapped, with no other way out than the one she came in.

She hears the sound of footsteps becoming louder and louder every second, and she turns just in time to come face-to-face with her saviors—no, captors—both with guns in hand, aimed at her.

Kyungseon is awkwardly holding a Beretta 92D with her left hand, and she would’ve looked like she was just holding a toy gun and is messing around, if not for her icy glare. This was real, and the coldness in their eyes was enough to send shivers down her spine. “Shame. I would’ve been able to use your talent, but you’re just getting out of hand.” They’ve done this plenty of times, they would never miss.

Lu looks behind her, considering the fall. It’s a twenty-foot drop to the ground, and either way, whichever option she chooses in an attempt to get out of such a god-forsaken precipice, there is more than a ninety-percent chance that she will still end up dead. Kyungseon smiles a chillingly beautiful smile upon seeing Lu’s hesitation, the ends of her lips turned up wickedly. There is no way out.

Lu turns her attention to Xiumin, for any recognition or signs of pity, at least. Something that she could link back to the boy who tried to help her out; to the boy who was always there, but barely says anything; to the boy who, she recalls, is the one from her dreams. But he remains stoic, expression blank and devoid of any emotion. 

That is when she realizes what was different from him from the last time she’s seen him: his eyes weren’t the same anymore.

Those brilliant hazel brown eyes that have always dazzled her are now coated with ice, an edge of coldness sticking out. They remained with a hazel color, but for all it’s worth, they could have been as pitch black as the night sky—like glassy orbs emptied of any emotion.

She closes her eyes, remembering how tragically it had ended for her during the first time. Maybe next time. In another next time, at least.

Kyungseon says something to Xiumin that she doesn’t quite catch, but she knows what it would mean, anyway. She stands still.

It’s him who kills her with one, two, three bullets; straight through the forehead, the other passing through the hollow of her cheekbones, and the last one aimed for her heart. She doesn’t see the hesitation that passes over his eyes before he is taken over with the instinct of killing upon order, and even Kyungseon doesn’t notice the sparkle in his eyes, as if he’s about to shed tears.

Even as she dies, she hopes he would remember at least a glimpse of the past just as she did, yet from the deadpanned look in his eyes, he doesn’t seem to regret anything.

Nobody sees his heart breaking, because Xiumin has always been good at pretending.

She lies on the snow-covered rooftop floor, eyes unseeing as the life drains out of her. Cold, dead, and mangled, but still eerily beautiful. Like a fallen angel ripped of its wings, cushioned in a pile of crimson-colored snow.


	3. Counting Stars at Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do stars get lost on their way to the sky? How would you find them?

In the first place, she wasn’t even supposed to be there. She was supposed to be sitting on her desk, flipping through a sports magazine and taking an occasional sip from her cup of cold coffee because she’s finally been left unsupervised by her boss. A friend might call and ask her to hang out because it’s a Friday night anyway– Chanyeol, presumably—and she’ll finally say yes after an uncountable number of refusals because finally, there aren’t any piles of documents she needs to sort through and figure out and she can stop working overtime.

This isn’t the case, however, as she finds herself being dragged along to the airport on such a short notice by a very pissed-looking Zitao. “Damn that old man, I told him to contact me if he has any problems with the trip at most two days before the scheduled flight, but he wouldn’t listen to me just because I’m younger than him.”

Luhan doesn’t know how to respond to that (what would you say to your boss’s son when he’s dissing his own father, anyway?), so she settles for the generic, “What happened, anyway?” pulling at the straps of her hastily-packed backpack. She doesn’t add the string of profanities listed in her head, along with a “Why am I here why am I being dragged to board an airplane heading for another country I’m still supposed to be sleeping at this hour oh god it’s only seven, your father pays me for a 9am job this isn’t what I asked for”.

“I have no idea,” Zitao says seriously, and Luhan doesn’t need to be a psychologist to know that he’s saying the truth, because she knows that there’s been a rift in the family ever since his parents got divorced a few years back. “He said it was an emergency that he can’t even postpone, so you’re the one substituting for him since you already know most of all that shit.”

Curse him and his vague memorandums. But Luhan just has to deal with it, because it’s her job. “But why do we need to send a representative? This is the first time they’re doing this, right?”

Zitao shrugs. “Some shit about tourism and connections. Even though their entertainment industry is already big, they still need more connections. The good thing about that, though, is that the company will gain a form of untold public advertisement from this.” 

“Hey, what if the old man’s actually getting fucked right now, though?” Zitao suggests out of the blue, and Luhan has to fight the urge to gag on his Yves Saint Laurent fur coat because it’s too early to think of such vulgar things related to someone who she’ll always see as a hermit. It still surprises her how casually the guy talks about his father as if they weren’t blood relatives.

“Oh god, please, please don’t suggest things like that. I don’t want to know anything about my boss’s sexual exploits.” She squeezes the bridge of her nose, banishing away any unwanted images her imagination automatically conjures up.

“Don’t worry, I’m not too excited with the prospect of finding out my father’s kinks either. Just a thought, though.” Zitao shrugs. “Now shoo, I don’t want the imperial family to send your dismembered head over if you end up doing anything wrong, especially if it’s just because you were late. I like opening packages right after eating, and having any of that wouldn’t help with digestion.”

Luhan wants to ask why it wasn’t Zitao himself who went as the company’s representative since he’s pretty much capable of doing so too, given that he was the heir of the entertainment empire the old man has established, but thinks better of it anyway, because she doesn’t want to be lashed out on at 7am in case Zitao was in a bad mood.

Well at least she’s going on a trip to Korea in the first class section, all expenses paid.

✯

 

Luhan could feel it in her bones the first time she lays eyes on him; she knows this guy, yet she holds herself back. How do you tell the crown prince of Korea that you’re having a hunch that the two of you are soul mates, anyway?

So instead, she settles for a ninety-degree bow, her back straight but not stiff, hands relaxed against her sides despite her nerves. The whole time introductions had been made, her eyes kept flitting back to him, as if some sort of invisible force kept pulling at her and whispering at her ear, telling her to look.

The prince bows back, and although she knows she should be listening, his eyes keep her mesmerized and she finds herself staring straight into them, looking for some sort of recognition as if sifting through a pile of clothes.

Luhan remembers something that she’s always dismissed as a dream and thinks of the ghost of a smile in the stead of a face contorted in pain, a breathy sigh in place of a scream of agony—the sound of her own voice pleading for mercy drowned out by the noise of the present.

It was some sort of euphemism for someone who was supposed to never open their eyes to see the sun ever again, and it might have colored out the truth a bit, if not completely, but she’d rather lie to herself and say that she rarely remembers anything, if at all, rather than say the truth and admit that he really did kill her back then, in a lifetime that was previously their own, too.

“…Miss Lu is HLE’s current representative, as we have received a message of apology from CEO Huang that he really wouldn’t be able to attend the festival because of some pressing matters.” The guide assigned to her—Jongdae, was it?—explains, and the empress asks him something about the letter, but it comes out as distant mumbles to Luhan because all she sees is Kim Minseok.

✯

 

Luhan knows that lots of guests are coming, but she hasn’t expected a long table filled with important people that she’s already almost elbow-to-elbow with the crown prince. She guesses they aren’t as strict as they are now with the royal policies, knowing that even during dinners, royalties tend to sit at the far end of the table with their guest at the other end, but of course that’s just her, because she has no idea how anything in the palace works, having only been basing from the dramas she’s watched.

“What’s it like to work with an idol?” Minseok asks Luhan somewhere during the middle of dinner. She assumes that the emperor and empress have heard, judging from the glances they’ve given in Minseok’s direction, but they don’t seem to pay it any mind. It gives her a weird feeling of being thrown off-balance, remembering that his parents had somehow also been like this the very first time they met. Or so she heard.

Luhan swallows the meat she’s been chewing. “I don’t really know much about that, your majesty, since I work in the office. People like me don’t usually see the idols except during meetings for promotions and things like that. Sometimes we even get to see trainees more often than the ones who already debuted, given that we evaluate their progress every month.”

“Ah, I see. So I guess you wouldn’t be as star struck as their makeup artists would be. Interesting.” He nods, lifting up a wine glass half-filled with clear liquid. “But please, drop the title. We’re just the same age. I don’t like feeling old.”

Luhan smiles. It’s good to know that some things still never change. “As it is then, Minseok.”

✯

 

Luhan discreetly asks Jongdae questions about the royal family: is there anything in particular that pisses of the emperor or empress the most? Is it true that the empress dowager used to cook the family’s meals, back when she was still able to walk? Does Minseok have any siblings? What’s his best friend like?

The questions stream out easily and she knows that Jongdae is used to these questions from the fact that he directly answers them, taking it as a tourist asking out of curiosity of the place she’s visiting, when in reality, all she wants to know is how Minseok is doing. Was he lucky to have been born in a family that treats people fairly and without judgment, like his previous one? Does he still prefer irises over roses?

They’re taking a tour around the palace, with Jongdae pointing out places, and suddenly, all the facts just lay bare in front of her. “Right, so this pavilion right here is where Minseok’s fiancée stays during her visits. Now I know it’s kind of old fashioned to keep things this way since it’s already the 21st century, but you know the royal family: they don’t like breaking family traditions that much.”

“Fiancee? What do you mean fiancée?” Luhan asks Jongdae, voice caught up in her throat.

Jongdae scratches the back of his head. “Uh well, you know… when a man is engaged to a woman, that woman is called his—“

“No, not that.” Luhan shakes her head. I’m not dumb. “I get it. I understand Korean, remember?”

“Then why are you even asking me?” Luhan isn’t sure if Jongdae looks affronted or just annoyed.

“I mean, he’s 25, why does he already have a fiancée?”

“Well you’re 25, and you’re the assistant of HLE’s CEO.”

“My job doesn’t matter in this argument.” Luhan declares. “What I mean to say is: they still go on with that fixed marriage stuff? It’s the 21st century, for crying out loud!”

“Why do you seem so pressed with this issue?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Hey, really now? Or are you just interested in Minseok that much?”

Luhan almost blushes, but she puffs her cheeks in fake indignation, trying to turn the spotlight away from her. “Hey, just because I’m asking about a person doesn’t mean I like them romantically.” Luhan scolds. Jongdae just chuckles, amused as to how flummoxed the girl looks. He hadn’t thought she would fall easy prey to his teasing.

“Okay, okay,” he gives up. “Her name’s Oh Seyeon. It isn’t technically the mandatorily imposed type of fixed marriage, from what I heard. They were childhood friends, so when the emperor suggested that they get married after Seyeon graduates college, he readily agreed to it.”

Luhan stops walking, hands clenching into fists by her side. Why couldn’t he wait for me? But before Jongdae could notice the shift in her mood, she catches up to him and fixes a smile on her face, but it stays tight. “Ah, I get it now.”

✯

 

Stars completely dot the skyline the night Minseok asks Luhan to slip out of the palace’s theater house with him in the middle of a performance by Seoul’s Classical Dance Troupe. They go by unnoticed, carefully treading through shortcuts Minseok has memorized by heart that even in the darkness, he finds his footing. She follows his steps with her mind reminding her that he might only be doing this because he’s bored and that she’s the only other person in the confines of the building who seems to understand but her heart’s whispering to believe otherwise.

It’s pathetic to be following him around like this, when in the case that it was a different person, she never would. But she complied because even though she knows that she’s putting the company’s name and her job on the line for this visit, she would never know how to say no to Kim Minseok.

When they reach the vast piece of land that the royal family calls their garden, Minseok wordlessly sits by the fountain, looking up at the sky. Luhan sits beside him, trying to find comfort in the silence that’s continuing to stretch on, dividing a wall between them.

The sound of water flowing out of the angel statue’s hands to the floor of the fountain is the only thing that’s keeping her anchored to reality, and she looks up at the sky, eyes grazing through the constellations. It’s still dark out, but the stars provide enough light to guide a lost soul home. It’s kind of comforting to think about that, but then again, she wonders when Minseok would ever go back home with her.

“I always hear from a lot of people how lucky I am to be the crown prince.” Minseok is the first to share anything personal— the first one to speak up between the two of them, to be exact— that Luhan almost jumps in her skin from surprise. “They think I can do whatever I want, but… that’s hardly the case.”

Luhan has her hands on her lap and she fiddles with her fingers. “Are you telling me this because you’re nervous?”

Minseok peeks at her curiously. “Of what?”

She takes in a deep breath. “Of getting married.” It sounds more of a fact than a question, but Luhan doesn’t correct herself. She doesn’t know where this sudden surge of boldness comes from; just that there’s this urgency creeping up in her veins, whispering that she needs to say what she has to say before it’s too late.

“Ah, so you know about Seyeon.” Minseok nods and gives her a tight smile. She wonders why he doesn’t say anything about her being intrusive, even though she thinks that he might be uncomfortable with her being privy of the facts of his private life despite only knowing each other for a few days. “It’s Jongdae, isn’t it?” Luhan nods an affirmative, and Minseok shrugs in return. “I thought as much.”

She isn’t amazed at how Minseok kept his cool, but rather, she’s astonished as to how he is still practically the same person, even in this time. She’s left to wonder, though, whether he’ll still love her as he did back then, and whether he’ll make the same decision as he did in the past.

Minseok nods back in understanding, staring at his hands. He stays like that for a moment, trying to place his thoughts into words. “It’s not like they forced me into the marriage, it’s more of that they said that it would be good for the family if I ended up marrying Seyeon. And I’ve already known her for such a long time, so why the hell not?”

Minseok notices that Luhan seems to look disappointed. Luhan knows that she is disappointed. “You seemed to have agreed without so much as thinking of the possible consequences it may bring in the future.”

He looks away, snapping his attention back to the sky. He couldn’t stand seeing the dismay in her eyes. The usual excuse comes out of his mouth. “I tend to prioritize what I have at the moment. I’m not that much of a planner. Mom—I mean, the Empress— says I still need to work on that, for the sake of keeping the royal family’s name.”

Luhan crosses her arms over her chest, but she’s able to stop the shiver that almost wracks her entire body. It’s cold out, and she isn’t exactly wearing the best clothes for going on a sudden excursion to an open place. Without saying anything, Minseok removes the jacket he’s wearing over his suit and drapes it over her shoulders. She thanks him, but he only asks her if she has another question in mind. “Do you love her, though?”

Minseok looks at her – stares into the orbs of her eyes and through its depths, and underneath the layers of make-up to cover-up her youth and vulnerability, he tries to read what she really means to say. “I’m not really in the position to say that yet.”

You really still haven’t changed. You’re still dumb.

✯

 

They don’t talk about it again, but they do remain civil towards each other—friendly, even. Even when Seyeon suddenly comes over for a formal introduction to the royal family’s guests, with the empress making a big fuss over the unannounced arrival of her soon-to-be-daughter-in-law, not having had prepared a lavish dinner beforehand, Minseok pretends he isn’t introducing his fiancée to Luhan. Not because he’s ashamed of Seyeon, but because he doesn’t want to hurt Luhan. He couldn’t really be sure—after all, he’s just assuming—but he thinks he knows why she asked him that question back then, during that night.

And if only he asked, he would’ve confirmed that he was right.

✯

 

“I like you,” Minseok almost blurts out. The day’s nothing special, really; he’s just sitting there again in the garden in the middle of the night after escaping yet another show (a musical this time) with Luhan, talking about something he’s sure he’s familiar with, but couldn’t quite remember as soon as he got lost in her eyes. But he stops himself, because no, this isn’t right. It isn’t right to find yourself liking someone you just knew for a few days, more so because you seemed to start liking her romantically, which, when measured in a gauge, is comparatively higher than the feelings you’re having towards your fiancée.

They’re watching the stars, with Luhan pointing out the constellations when Minseok involuntarily reaches out to tuck a few stray strands of hair over her ear. Luhan momentarily stiffens before getting a grip of herself, used to years without his touch. Yet a smile is tugging at the ends of her lips as Minseok puts his hand back to rest on his knee, face blushing slightly from his sudden impulsive action.

They stay there, talking and talking and talking and watching the stars all the same, but somehow, when they’re getting back to the theater house, they find their fingers interlaced in each other’s, hands snuggly fitted, warming up each other in the middle of autumn.

If anyone notices their smiles, the lingering touches, the shared looks, and the stolen moments of handholding, nobody points it out.

✯

 

There isn’t exactly a word for what they are, but Luhan could feel that even if Minseok doesn’t remember, part of him at least recalls how it feels like to be together.

But then her time’s up and she’s leaving, back to the life she was so intent in keeping before fate tried to intervene and bring them back together again.

A simple “goodbye” and a handshake isn’t enough to convey everything Minseok wants to say, but his words are limited; his time booked for someone else who’s staying.

Back when she was just getting ready for her flight to leave for Seoul, Luhan couldn’t wait to be on her way back home. But now, as Minseok squeezes her hand in what she assumes as his way of comforting her since they couldn’t even be even five centimeters closer without anyone doubting anything, she feels lonely at the prospect of returning to the apartment she lives in by herself and waking up knowing that he’ll never be there to greet her over breakfast in the morning.

This is why she doesn’t like hellos much; because whether she likes it or not, goodbyes will always be inevitable. And frankly, she doesn’t know how to make anything good out of farewells.

“I wish you could stay,” Minseok stays over the phone once he has left with his entourage. He’s the only member of the royalty that has volunteered to see her off, and even though he had been permitted, his time had been limited, and he feels like he’s gone just as quickly as he had come—like sand slipping through crevices.

“I can visit,” Luhan offers. “But I know you know that this wouldn’t work. Unless…”

“But I can’t,” Minseok shakes his head, as if she could see him. “Remember what I said back then?”

Luhan sighs. For the Kim Minseok in this lifetime, there is only the present. That’s what he has differently from the time that has passed. “It’s your decision, anyway.”

It’s sad, but he needs to let Luhan go. He likes her, but he likes Seyeon too. And wouldn’t it be better if he settles for someone he has known for a much longer time—someone who his family is in favor of him getting married to? There’s a sniffle at the end of one line and a sigh on the other. “So… This is really goodbye, then.”

Luhan nods. Then, remembering that she’s not with him, she answers, “I understand.” 

Minseok ends the call and puts down his phone. He’s sure he’s made the better decision out of the two, but he thinks of the girl with the mousy brown hair and eyes that speak of lifetimes of sorrows and what could have been if only the situation they were in had been different.

✯

 

Luhan holds her hand out to the sky as another snowflake falls to the ground, and she catches it at the tips of her fingers. More snowflakes are beginning to fall, and she holds the one she’s caught in her hand to her face.

“There’s this myth that says that you can make a wish during the first snow. Is that true?” She remembers asking her mother back when she was a child; back when they were all happily living together and not that far apart from each other. Her mom would always tell her it’s true; her dad, on the other hand, would start telling these stories about the majesty and grandiosity of winter.

She smiles. “We’ll see each other again.”

It’s not a wish, but a promise.

✯

 

The night sky is dotted with stars twinkling, each one demanding attention when she looks up from where she is standing in an open field, the leaves of the tree beside her swaying against the soft breeze. She knows that this is a dream, mostly because she’s only ever been to a place where the stars shine the brightest not more than a few times, but that place is too far away, and she’s aware that she’s already gotten back home. But her heart still starts beating erratically once she sees a familiar figure’s silhouette outlined by the moon’s mild glow, even if she knows that this is a dream.

She sits down beside him on the grass, but he doesn’t seem to be startled, as if he has been expecting her presence. “Hey, do you know that if you try to reach out your hand, the stars would appear much closer, even if they’re actually miles away?”

She liked stargazing even though she rarely sees stars in their city, but she’s never had a thought of what it would really be like to have seen a star up close. But now she doesn’t feel the need to go to outer space just to know. “That’s probably logic speaking.” She answers, grateful that this was just a dream and that there wouldn’t be any tutors scolding them for being too close to each other or addressing each other informally. She likes this, likes the feeling of his warmth beside her, and the fact that she could just say anything that she wanted to say.

Minseok only hums in response. It takes a few beats before he asks another question. “Do you know that when stars die, they get all burned up, then their flames just disappear, and they turn into black holes?” he turns to look at her this time, and their faces were just inches away from each other that she could smell his peppermint toothpaste. If she just leans forward a little bit, then maybe…

“Now that just doesn’t make any sense, you know.” Luhan frowns, not really getting the gist of what Minseok was trying to say.

“What I’m saying is, “ he touches her face, and she knows that she’s dreaming; she knows that this isn’t true and that she could only hope that it was, but she believes everything, anyway, because she doesn’t have anything else to hold on to. “I might be far away. I might be gone for a while, but I’ll come back.”

“I’ll be back,” he says voice quivering, yet a smile on his face. He runs his thumb along the curves of her cheek bones, and is able to draw out a smile from her, despite the fact that she knows this is another one of those goodbyes whose end no one will ever know. “For you. I’ll do everything I can to find my way back. Can you wait for me?”

She nods, because either way, she would still be waiting for him. Hasn’t she always been? No matter how many days, no matter how many years it may take. Even after death. “Of course.”

And so she waits, day in and day out, for a call or a surprise tap on the shoulder.

But he never comes back.

✯

 

Luhan takes out the toasted bread she’s made for breakfast and puts it in her mouth. There’s the familiar feeling of normalcy coming back to her as she tries to get used once more to living alone in her apartment. She presses the remote control’s “on” button with a greasy finger, oil marking the button. The thirty-inch television screen projects a woman in baby pink blouse sitting behind a blue desk; it was probably the morning news.

She nods off to what the girl is saying as she takes her seat, the toast still caught in-between her upper and lower teeth. She pinches one end of the bread with her fingers and pulls, chewing thoughtfully as she tries to process the images the television is trying to present.

“A private jet crashed in a forest in Jeju Island, South Korea earlier this morning while on its way to Beijing. There had been three people on the plane, one of which is the current crown prince of South Korea, Kim Minseok. All three were reported to have been dead on arrival.”

Luhan doesn’t hear anything else over the deafening roar of her heart ramming against her rib cage. Minseok was gone now, along with another chance of being with him in this lifetime.

If someone out there was listening, she would’ve wanted to ask when they would have a better fate, but for all it’s worth, she doesn’t think she can say anything at this point, anyway, her chest feeling as if broken shards of glass had been dragged over it repeatedly that she couldn’t even breathe.

 

✯


	4. Goodbye to Romance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forever is an awfully long time and time has a way of changing things.

Minseok touches the tiny hands clutching the end of his sleeve with his own small ones, a reassuring smile directed toward the teary-eyed girl. “Come on now Luhan, I won’t leave you. I’m just going to the bathroom.”

Luhan pouts, eyes welling with tears, her grasp on his sleeve tightening as if she was holding on for dear life. “It’s not because I’m annoying?”

His eyes widen at her conclusion and his face fills with as much disbelief a five-year old can hold. “No, why would I be annoyed with you? We’re friends, right?”

His words ease her tension a bit, so her grip on his sleeve loosens up. “So you’ll stay with me?” She sniffs. She doesn’t know what’s up, but after dreaming of a woman that she feels is an older version of herself watching the news and crying out her heartbreak from finding out that someone had died (she doesn’t know why either, but something tells her that the person the news was referring to was Minseok), she just didn’t want to let her friend go out of her sight, for fear of having him leave her to cope with her frustrations all alone. “You won’t just disappear when I’m not around, right?”

“Of course.” He answers back, his smile evident in his voice.

“You promise?”

He nods. “I promise.”

“Forever and ever?” her voice rises at the last syllable, and he chuckles at the sudden change in intonation.

“Sure. Forever and ever.”

✉

She is fifteen when she suddenly remembers.

Everything comes down on her in a rush, and she feels overwhelmed with all the memories that she almost faints, knees buckling under her while she’s walking. But she doesn’t fall, as she feels hands wrap around her shoulders, firm in their resolution to keep her from tumbling down. Her head still hurts, but she regains focus and she peers up to see Minseok looking down at her with utmost concern, eyebrows creasing together with worry.

“Hey, are you alright?” he asks her, voice gentle. She nods and gives him a small smile, doubting that he remembers. “I’m just really hungry, I guess.” He helps her regain her balance, fingers curled protectively around her shoulders and despite all those lifetimes, she still feels the same.

She stands straighter and fixes the creases on her uniform to distract herself from the warmth of her shoulders, right where he touched her. Really, she shouldn’t be bothered by that right now, seeing as his touches were as familiar as the back of her palm since they practically grew up together (shared lifetimes together, even), but she still just couldn’t help being affected by everything he does.

He smiles cheekily at her. “I bet you’re breeding elephants in your stomach.” She hits him lightly on the arm with a pout, and he just laughs it off and pats her head lightly. They start walking again, this time without saying anything. But there wasn’t an ocean of awkward silence between them, but comfortable spaces of a calming quiet.

“Hey Minseok… Do you believe in reincarnation? That maybe after death, we’ll get to live again and meet the people we knew back in our previous lives?” she suddenly asks him moments later, and he looks back at her with wide eyes.

“Hey, are you sure you’re okay?” he touches the back of his hand to her forehead, and she suddenly turns stiff under his touch. “It’s not likely of you to take things seriously, are you sick?”

She feels her cheeks start to burn, and she swats his hand away, turning her back to him so he wouldn’t see her face. She starts walking faster, sneakers tapping against the concrete pavement as she gets ahead of him. “Damn you Kim Minseok, I was trying to be smart and philosophical.”

He laughs that adorable laugh of his that she had always loved, and she couldn’t help but smile because his laughter was everything to her and it was contagious. Luhan could hear his footsteps as he lightly jogs to catch up with her, backpack bobbing up and down as both of the straps of his bag are slung over his shoulders. “Nah, I like the usual you better.”

She feels her heart thundering in her chest, but she excuses it as a symptom caused by her nervousness, since it’s their first day in high school anyway.

✉

It was during the day of their field trip. They were going to the museum. She was ecstatic.

Minseok looks at the painting in front of him, not fully understanding how one thing is considered as art and how another is considered as merely an attempt to be artistic. He sighs and turns his head to the side just a little bit, so she wouldn’t notice that he wasn’t “dissecting” the painting and “interpreting its parts” like she’s told him.

Luhan’s eyebrows are knitted in concentration, her chin resting atop the side of a fisted hand—the genuine pose of a philosopher. Minseok almost laughs because she looks like she’s investigating a crime scene, when all she is actually doing was looking at a painting of a road with stop signs getting smaller and smaller along the sides as the distance from the foreground increased. He doesn’t even know if it’s a painting: it was simply a drawing, really, with black paint as the medium for tracing the lines instead of a pencil or a marker. The only splash of color was the red from the stop signs, but that couldn’t have been any good, either.

Most of their classmates are huddled around the tour guide a few meters behind them, who’s saying something about artists gaining recognition for their work by either following the norms of artistry and being good at it or going directly against the convention and setting about a new artistic revolution. But all of this just goes right through Minseok’s ear as he isn’t paying attention to the technicalities, because to him, none of all those paintings compare to the majestic piece of artistry that is the girl right next to him. But really, he isn’t the type to say it out loud even if he’s been thinking of that for a long time already.

“There’s something romantic about it, isn’t there? Like, at the foreground, those lines are far apart from each other, but as it goes on further, they get closer and closer together, until they’re intersecting at one point, right there in the background.” She tells him in a quiet voice that he almost jumps out of his skin, forgetting that she isn’t one of the statues on display, carved out of wax or marble into perfection.

He scratches the back of his head, searching for an answer. “I think it’s nothing but tragic, really.” She gives him a puzzled look, not seeing how he is making his point. “I mean, even if they’re intersecting as we see it, in reality, they’re not. They’ll forever be parallel lines that go on and on but never actually meet.”

Luhan shakes her head with a small smile that goes unnoticed. “Don’t drag your pessimism into this, boy. This doesn’t work the way you do math.”

“I’m not!” he protests, voice rising. He stops himself short as she gives him a look. ‘It’s just that…” he looks back at the artwork hung on the wall, realizing that there may be implications that he could no longer explain nor understand. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything. “Sometimes, the truth isn’t always in the way you want it to be.”

They turned to look into each other’s eyes right at the same moment, and in an instant, there is an unspoken understanding in those looks; an unspoken agreement that they, at least, aren’t like those lines in the painting.

This is the point where they intersect.

“Hey, are you wearing make-up? That’s eyeliner right, there, isn’t it?” Minseok points out, breaking the spell binding the two of them together.

Luhan touches her cheeks, embarrassed. Well it’s not like she had every intention for him to notice that she put in some effort to look good today. And she definitely didn’t have the idea that he’ll tell her how she looks pretty for the first time just because she wore a bit of makeup. It’s not like she cares in looking good in front of him. “Nah, it’s just my eyelashes. They’re naturally like that.” She hides her smile behind pursed lips.

✉

Minseok taps his foot against the marble-tiled floor outside the women’s bathroom of the museum. He doesn’t mind waiting, especially since he’s waiting for Luhan, but still, it was tiring. Especially since almost thirty minutes have already passed.

After a few seconds, she finally comes rushing out of the bathroom, looking around in panic. “Where are the others?”

“The bus already left.” Minseok declares, not a hint of sadness in his tone. Maybe because he himself told their teacher that it’s okay if the class goes ahead without them. Or maybe because he tried to point out every inconvenience the whole class will experience if they kept on waiting for them.

Luhan’s face falls at this realization, and she hangs her head in apology. She blames her mom for cooking as if there was a feast the previous night. “I thought they’d all be waiting for us…” she says, not mentioning her problem with indigestion in embarrassment, but it was already that damn obvious. Minseok doesn’t respond, and she’s afraid that he’s gotten mad at her, but when she looks up at him, he is smiling.

He beams down at her like she means the world to him, and a part of her aches, remembering the time he smiled at her like that a lifetime ago for one last time, before he disappeared without preamble. That was when he died without her by his side to hold his hand throughout the turbulence until the world shifted and they fell. “It’s okay, I don’t mind waiting. Let’s go home?” he says, offering her his hand.

This time though, unlike in the previous one, she holds his hand and smiles back at him, hoping to convey that if he had his world built around her, then he, in turn, _is_ her world.

✉

Bad luck befalls them the moment they get out.

The moment they step out of the museum’s metal doors, it starts raining hard, droplets looking as if they’re boring holes through the umbrellas of some passers-by. The shelter provided by the sloped roof of the building is the only thing that’s keeping them dry for now, but even that wouldn’t last for long.

Minseok turns to face Luhan, expression turning into that of dismay. “Uhm… do you have an umbrella?”

Luhan looks back at him, perturbed. “God Minseok, you know that you could never trust me with things like this. Maybe we should just run out and try to get to the bus station. If we hurry, we could get on the last bus home before it leaves.”

Her reassurance was _definitely_ all that he needed to hear.

“On three?” he tightens his grip around her hand protectively.

She squeezes back, trying to reassure him that it’s okay, because even if this wasn’t the perfect weather, this is still the most perfect day, anyway. “On three.” She nods.

The moment Minseok says “three” she pushes the front soles of her feet downward and sprints to the right, hand still enclosed in his. They’re soaking wet when they arrive at the bus stop, but fate seems to have other plans, for they see the bus meters away from them, almost disappearing from view as the gap in-between increases.

“I saw a convenience store when we passed by a while ago,” she says over the rain, straining to be heard as the drumming of the droplets against the asphalt get louder and louder. “We could seek shelter there.” Minseok just nods and follows her lead; too disappointed to argue because this isn’t going the way he wanted it to be.

The girl by the counter looks at them weirdly, popping the gum in her mouth. But then she seems to think better of this and just shrugs, continuing to flip through the magazine she’s been reading.

Luhan sits down on one of the unoccupied tables as Minseok walks by the shelves, scouring for good food. In the end, he winds up coming back with two cups of instant ramyun and two bottles of water. The couple who’s eating in a table near theirs gives them odd looks, but he just shrugs them off.

They eat silently, probably mulling over the fact that they would probably have a hard time getting home since transportation isn’t available at the moment and walking seems to be the best alternative, when Luhan, for all that she’s worth, peeks up at him through her fringe.

He almost chokes on his noodles seeing the black smudges under her eye. So that’s why those people have been giving them strange looks. “Hey, you’ve… got some dirt under your eyes.” He tries to say it casually.

“Where, here?” she rubs the spot under her eyes and the stain spreads even further that she now resembles a raccoon. Minseok fights the urge to laugh, biting down his lip.

“Ah, here, let me help you.” He takes out a handkerchief from his pocket—already wet from the rain—and wipes it over the blackened spots on her face. The gesture seems so oddly sweet and romantic that Luhan stiffens in her seat, not wanting to ruin the moment by saying the wrong thing or doing something appropriately dumb.

He peers at her eyes and just focuses his gaze at her, and to other people, she must have been just some girl with smudged eyeliner and wet, unruly hair, but to him, she was the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. And in that second of spur-of-the-moment decisions that he couldn’t do so much against, he tilts his head forward and closes the distance between their lips.

Maybe it wasn’t bad luck after all.

✉

Luhan isn’t one to expect, knowing that nothing good happens out of waiting for something that will probably never happen, but she’ll be lying if she says that she didn’t expect her relationship with Minseok to transcend to the next level after what happened the previous day.

But when they meet again on the way to school that morning, nothing changes, Luhan feels dumb to have thought it meant anything. Minseok greets her the same way—with a pinch on the cheek and a ruffling of the hair; and doesn’t say anything about the kiss in the convenience store and the hand-holding that followed on their way home with a silence that stretched between them that wasn’t stifling, yet still existed because they didn’t know of the words to say.

But she could sense an underlying tone to his movement and the way his lips would quiver as if about to say something but couldn’t, as if there was an external physical force restraining him from opening his lips. And really, this wasn’t the first time this had happened, but Luhan still doesn’t know how to tell him that she wants to acknowledge whether or not they’re a step further off their friendship.

She shrugs it off for now, a weight lifted off her shoulders but still a problem left in storage because she doesn’t want things between them to be awkward. Maybe it was something he wasn’t ready to talk about it either, so Luhan has to wait to see what might happen next, because she herself doesn’t know what to do about it. But it was okay, because she’s been waiting for such a long time – what more this time?

So they put it off for some time until the days turn into weeks, weeks into months and eventually years that she could hardly even remember the reason why she’s ever thought they could even be more than what they are right now. But sometimes there are the easy smiles and the looks they share across the room, and they come to approach a common point in the middle of empty spaces and unsaid words sitting at the end of their tongues. These are the times when she knows that she doesn’t even need to ask anymore.

✉

The day when they find out the results of their college entrance exams is the point wherein they start to drift far apart from each other.

“You won’t come with me to Seoul?” Minseok asks after finding out that Luhan will enroll in their town’s local college even though she passed the exam in the national university. Even if things went differently and Minseok ended up not liking her more than as a friend, they’ve been around each other for years now that he just couldn’t imagine a life without her constant presence, even if it means staying as her best friend.

Luhan looks down, not wanting to meet his eyes for fear that she wouldn’t be able to say no to anything he says. “I couldn’t possibly leave this place. I—my family needs me. So I can’t leave. I just… couldn’t.” But really, it’s a lie, because even if her parents wouldn’t allow her, she could do anything to leave. Even back in those previous lifetimes, in all those instances, she always could have walked away instead, but she didn’t.

But even when she thought she could always wait for him, this time, she knows she couldn’t anymore. Not when she knows that he couldn’t even say what he really meant. Maybe because she’s tired of it all. Maybe because she wants to try if they really are meant for each other, since there’s that belief that two people will still end up together no matter what happens if they’re really meant to be. Maybe because she wants him to take the initiative and make a move this time. So she decided to find the alternative instead; even if it meant a life without him.

Minseok touches Luhan’s shoulder lightly, the distance between them an awkward space of emptiness that he doesn’t know how to close the gap between. “But won’t you come with me? I could convince your parents, it wouldn’t be that hard, really.”

Luhan bites her bottom lip, fighting back tears. Fighting back the urge to not let go. It’s so easy to say yes, but she’s come to the point where she doesn’t even know if she wants to say yes anymore. “You wouldn’t need me there, anyway. And I’ll be okay here. This is where I belong.”

And then, there was the question that she never thought she’d hear from him. “But what about us?”

Luhan pulls back, looking up at him with an unreadable expression. “Us? What is there to us? What are we, really? Childhood friends who casually kiss each other?” There’s too much bitterness in her voice that she doesn’t even recognize her voice as the emotion laces her usual tone.

“I—“ Minseok starts, but he doesn’t get to finish. This isn’t what he wanted—this isn’t the way things are supposed to be.

“We were never really anything more than best friends, right?” Luhan says, tone gentle despite the bitter smile on her face. “You never asked if we could be more than that, and I would never say yes to a question that’s never been asked. So there’s no need for you to feel sorry.”

Minseok feels at lost. “But you’ll wait for me, right?”

Luhan doesn’t give him an answer and walks away instead; steps deliberately slow as if waiting for him to catch up. But he doesn’t know this, so he just stands there in the middle of their usual rendezvous place—the top of the stairs a few meters from their houses; the point where their fates intersect—knowing that he’s fucked up. He’s always been waiting for the best moment to tell her, and now that he’s belatedly realized that it’s passed, he figures that there really isn’t a perfect time for anything, and that each of those moments could have been the best moment, if only he decided before it was too late.

“Please… wait.” He whispers into the air, but the wind doesn’t carry his voice with it, just the sadness clinging to every crevice, but without the tears spilling.

Luhan doesn’t look back at him, and he likes to think that it’s because she’d be waiting for him someplace else.

This time the sparks were gone, and the only things they left were the burn marks that might heal over time but would never disappear, and the sting of what had been and what could have been leaving a pricking pain that would always be there, but they would eventually get used to.

✉

Luhan doesn’t show up on the bus stop on the day that Minseok leaves for Seoul, even when all of their other friends did. Even Yixing, who tends to forget everything after a minute has passed is there, a sleepy smile on his face and white earphones hanging tangled around his neck.

Minseok looks out the window of the vehicle, smiling and waving at the people he’s known for years but is leaving for who knows until when. His eyes scan both ways the road goes, looking for a familiar shock of tousled, mousy brown hair but sees none. His smile falters, but he keeps it up until the bus’s engine rumbles to a start and sets off. Up until the last minute, he’s convincing himself that this was for the best, but he knows in his heart that this isn’t right.

Luhan looks away from where she’s standing hidden behind a brick wall meters from them, heart heavy but eyes surprisingly dry for someone who is seeing the person she is pining for leave. She closes her eyes when she hears the distant, mechanical whirr of the vehicle coming to life, not wanting to hurt herself more by seeing him leave.

At exactly 8:00 AM, the bus leaves, carrying Minseok and Luhan’s hopes with it.

✉

_Hey, Minseok,_

Delete.

Luhan stares at the blank message field she’s been trying to fill but keeps on constantly deleting. She tries again, fingers typing with urgency. _Dear Minseok._ Too formal. Delete.

_Hey you idiot, I_

Delete.

_I love you. I never got to say this before you left, but just so you know, I love you._

11:21AM. Message saved to drafts.

_I miss you. Please come back._

Sending cancelled.

_Just come back._

Her thumb hovers over the send button.

✉

The day their paths meet once more is the month Luhan opens a bookstore.

It’s been five months since her wedding and seven years since _that_ time, and just when she thinks everything’s okay—that the regrets of the past would never come back to haunt her again—he shows up at the counter just like that, never having really changed somehow despite the fact that no attempts of regaining communication had been made by both parties.

She blinks, not fully being able to believe that the person who she’s wanted to see the most back then is now standing in front of her, eyes unchanging and expression openly saying that he wants to tell her a lot of things, but he just doesn’t know where to start.

But the difference is, things aren’t the same as they were in the past anymore.

After seven years, numerous failed blind dates set up by a friend and zero attempts of getting in a relationship with another, there he is, right at the point where he left from, still struggling to find the right words to say.

And there she is, in a space parallel to his, moving forward, moving on. Keeping up and constantly forging ahead.

“So I heard you got married. To Yixing.” He starts by way of introduction. There’s a small smile forcefully trying to tug at his lips, but Luhan knows that this isn’t the smile he genuinely gives; this isn’t the smile that she’s fallen in love with over and over again. “Congratulations on your wedding, even though my greetings might have been a little too late.” Even if he tries, it’s obvious that he isn’t happy about it, but he doesn’t sound sarcastic like the way Luhan would’ve thought all these years; just sad.

 _You’re always late,_ Luhan wants to say in response, but she bites back her tongue. “Thank you.” She responds, a little too coldly for her liking. “I heard you’re spearheading the recreation of that old park in Seoul.” _You know, that one you’ve always told me about back then. The one where you said you’d take me to, because that’s where your father proposed to your mother._ “So congratulations on that, too.” She tries to smile, but her expression cracks. The mask almost falters, but she doesn’t know how she’s able to keep it up.

Minseok nods and mumbles his thanks, eyes seeming to be searching something lost within the depths of Luhan’s irises. She clears her throat, feeling dryness clog up on it. “So, what can I help you with?” It’s awkward addressing him like this: business-like and mature, devoid of all familiarity and hidden grins from stories that they usually recount. But she doesn’t want to think about that, because she thinks she’d feel even more conscious of the growing void stretching out between them.

“I told you to wait for me, didn’t I?” Minseok finally says, voice cracking, and there’s that sadness again, both in his eyes and his voice. “Why couldn’t you?” he isn’t blaming her, just simply asking. But she could feel the hurt underlying his words, a sense of dismay from a betrayal.

She swallows down the lump in her throat along with all the guilt, leaving stubborn traces along the sides of her tongue. “I never told you that I would.”

Minseok looks at her as if he’d been slapped, the pain of a time that can never be brought back again resurfacing and clouding up the present.

He clenches his hands into fists, and she’s known him for such a long time to recognize the gesture he makes when he is fighting away tears. The guilt gnaws on Luhan, because even though she remembers being hurt because of him in their previous lives, it was nothing compared to the pain of seeing Minseok suffering in front of her eating her heart out. “But why?”

She looks away from him, seeing dust motes floating, highlighted by the rays of the sun filtering through the open windows. “People get tired of waiting too, Minseok.” _But you’ll never know because you’ve never waited as long as I have._ “And for me, I’ve grown tired seven years back.”

 _But that isn’t true,_ says the deleted messages and the unsent ones.

 _She’s lying,_ adds the birthday gifts stocked up somewhere in the dumpsters. _She missed you._

 _Can’t you see?_ Screams the calls he’s received from an unregistered number, dropped right after a greeting.

Minseok looks down at his hands. Maybe he should’ve said something back then. Maybe he should have taken the risk of asking her even if meant they are to be met with awkwardness, because now, the tension between them is even more constricting than the unease he felt with the thought of being rejected.

She’s not sure how they ended up this way—back to square one, but somehow even worse, with a few steps backwards to boot. If only things went differently, this wouldn’t have been the case, but it doesn’t. Maybe because Yixing was the one who asked, not him. Maybe because it was Yixing who had been staying by her side when she needed someone instead of Minseok. Maybe because he was the closest thing she could have that was remotely related to Minseok and the history they shared. Maybe because he was there at the right place, at the right time. Maybe because he had said the right words, at the exact moment she felt like losing her balance. But the truth is she’s not really sure.

This is the beginning of the point where they will never truly meet again as they have hoped before.

“One last thing, then… Did you marry him just because you wanted to forget me? Or get even with me?” Minseok asks, not sure of what he wants to hear in return, anyway.

Luhan shakes her head, more of to clear her own mind and convince herself that she’s made the right decision rather than as an answer to Minseok’s question. She _does_ love Yixing, there is no question to that. But it couldn’t be compared to the lifetimes of desire she has pent up in her heart, crying out for Minseok. She clenches her fists against her sides, because she’s already made her decision; there wasn’t supposed to be any turning back now. But when Minseok suddenly showed up, she could feel her resolve crumbling, worries skittering across her mind; a voice she recognizes as her own whispering against her ear, asking whether she made the right decision.

 _Inhale, exhale._ A single “no” was her answer. No explanations, no flashbacks filtered in monochrome or reasons to back up for what she says. Minseok waits awhile to see whether she’ll add anything, whether she was just thinking of the right thing to say.

But she doesn’t say anything even after a few seconds, and he realizes that that _was_ her answer. And that maybe she doesn’t regret it at all.

So he walks out of the door, carrying the broken pieces of his heart with him, this moment another one of the bittersweet memories he associates with recollections of Luhan—the girl he has loved, and always will. Until the very end.

He knows that his story isn’t one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, but if there was one thing in his life that feels as if it’s been ripped off of some cliché angst-induced film that he regrets the most, it’s that even if he had the ability to say anything he wants, he didn’t have the guts to say the right thing, to the right person, at the right time.

There’s that part of him that knows that Luhan might have left everything, would’ve agreed to come with him, if only he had asked the right question and said the right words. But he doubts that part now, because he doesn’t know just how much she’s changed for the past seven years.

But even if he had the chance, he wouldn’t. Because he doesn’t want to ruin her life any further by stealing her away from Yixing. Because he knows that it was Yixing who filled in all the gaps that he has left unfilled.

As Luhan watches his retreating back from the glass panels beside her, the silhouette of his shadow fading against the ash-colored concrete as he walks farther and farther away from her and out of her life, she feels hot tears streaming down her cheeks—tears that she doesn’t know she’s been holding back.

Minseok never looks back. Not even once.


	5. Once in Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Do you think about the past, too? Like, what could have happened if you hadn’t let go?_

Luhan looks up from the vase filled with purple lilacs when the door of the flower shop she works in opens to reveal a face she thought she’d never see in this lifetime. But fate has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, for when she felt like there was no hope for them to meet at almost twenty-eight years of her existence in this lifetime, he shows up, clad in denim pants and a plain blue shirt underneath a gray hoodie.

The bells suspended over the door chime as the door is pushed open, but she doesn’t hear its tinkling sound, because at that moment, there was only him, her, and the spaces separating them from each other, growing smaller and smaller with every step he’s taking.

He smiles at her, revealing pink gums and rows of small teeth – a smile that she’s always loved seeing. She smiles back almost immediately, before she even realizes what she’s doing; an involuntary mechanism that she could hardly get rid of.

“Do you have irises? I mean the flower, not the part of the eye.” Was the first thing that comes out of his mouth with an awkward laugh as the next one, and she likes to think that there is a hint of recognition as he lays his eyes on her, a faint gleam from the brown pools that are his eyes.

“I—“she starts to say, but immediately catches herself and stops. “Of course, of course.” She politely tells him to wait a moment and he nods, offering another smile. Her breath hitches, but she opens the door behind her before he could notice, and she is welcomed with a room filled with fresh flowers still in large plastic bins half-filled with water. She stops to inhale the mixed scents of the flora surrounding her, trying to calm the wild beating of her heart.

She almost picks out the wrong type of flower in her confusion but manages to steer herself away from uncertainty. She plucks out a single iris from the bunch to show him as a sample, and she remembers a particular scene, one where she slides open the wooden door of her room leading to the balcony to get some fresh air and is greeted by a boy holding a single flower. She shakes her head as if the motion could chase her thoughts away. _He couldn’t possibly remember, could he?_  
  
The smile that he greets her with once she comes out of the door is brighter than the smiles she remembers that it almost blinds her, and she feels her heart clench. How could she ever stop herself from falling for that smile?

“Here you go,” she hands him the flower, and their fingers graze by each other when he reaches out for the stalk. She feels some sort of electric shock go through her body that she is momentarily paralyzed, and the next thing she knows is that he is looking at her through concerned eyes, asking her if she is alright. “I’m fine,” she waves the question away.

She clears her throat and tries for the usual voice she uses to talk to when selling a product, all business-like but not losing the pretenses of being friendly. “Anyway, if you need more, I still have a dozen at the back. There’s a discount if you buy a bouquet, you see.” She says, partly failing at her attempt because she comes out sounding like she’s telling him something about herself instead of being nonchalant.

“Nah, I think one’s enough. A single flower conveying everything you want to say is better than a bouquet of flowers that could only pass on the gesture of romanticism and not what you feel.” His smile doesn’t falter even if the tone of his voice has changed into a serious one, and somehow, she has the feeling that he’s saying those words to her directly, as if he wants her to understand something but he couldn’t say it yet.

He puts the iris to his nose, closing his eyes as he inhales its smell. He gives it an appreciative look before looking back at her, as if searching for something in her eyes. Is he waiting for her to ask something? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“So… who’s the lucky girl?” she brings herself to say, because who knows, this Minseok might be slightly different from the ones in their previous lives; this Minseok might want her to ask everything about his life and he’ll quickly give answers that aren’t either cut short or mysterious.

The smile he gives her says a lot, because it seems like she’s hit the jackpot and he’s just really happy for her. She might have asked the right question, then.

He hands her back the flower. “I think I’ve just found her.” The answer hits her like a wave, and somehow she’s confused because she isn’t sure if she’s just imagining things. Is she dreaming, or did he really recognize her?

“Do you…” she gulps, choosing her words carefully, not wanting him to think of her as someone who’s a little loose on the edges, hallucinating of lifetimes gone and past when she has no proof but her memory: a memory that no one else could see through—no one else but her. “Do you... remember?

He laughs, not the sarcastic laugh she’s once heard or the mad cackling he does in a distorted nightmare she used to have of him that usually disturbs her sleep at night, but just the right kind of laugh—the type of laugh that makes her smile in return. “Of course I remember.” And she remembers to breathe, letting out a loud exhale of a breath she hasn’t remembered holding. “Why would you think I’d go here instead of anywhere else?”

He holds her left hand and slips a silver band through her ring finger, where he believes it’s supposed to belong, gleaming like a star that has found its way back home. “And I’m sorry it took me this long to say it, but I like you, too. I always have.”

This time, she feels like everything was worth it. This time, she feels satisfied. Out of the five different lifetimes she’s lived in, this is undeniably her favorite, and given the chance, she would always want to relive it. Because this is the one where she loved him (well clearly, she always had), and he loved her back—really showed that he loved her back; this is the one where they really might have the chance to end up together, not just a face in someone’s memory, ready to disappear in a lapse.

Of course she doesn’t know that this is the last lifetime she has the chance to live in, but even if she does, her thoughts never would have changed, because this is when she felt alive the most. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all song titles are based from Sunny Hill's songs


End file.
